On life, the universe, and coffee.
Oh yeah, and books... |
**this is an 18+ blog!**
On life, the universe, and coffee.
Oh yeah, and books... |
Hiya! yeah, I know, I missed last week. I blame the plague that continues to fester in my house, refusing to release my toddlers and my husband from it's grasp. Sigh... Anyway, this week's topic is A book that influenced my life. My immediate thought for this is one by a writer I admire, Saranna DeWylde. She published a nonfiction memoir under her real name, Sara Lunsford: I want to tell you about this book, but I find myself at a loss for words whenever I try to talk about it. It's hard to explain how this resonated with me, when I've never been in the situations that she was. There's something about the mindset, the depths, the desperation, and the resolution...I often think about everything she overcame and say to myself, if she could come out of all that with a positive outlook, I can get through this... (whatever that current "this" is). The only thing I can say is, read this book.
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Hello again! this week's blog challenge topic is, how much of myself is in my writing? The smart-ass answer is not very much, since I'm not a wolf shifter, lol. Or a vampire, or any other supernatural being. Or even a badass nurse. :) To be honest, though, it truly varies book by book. My very first book, In Self Defense, is dedicated to my husband "for being my Jason" ... In the book, Jason and Sarah are best friends, and after an abusive relationship, Jason helps her heal, get her life back together, and they eventually end up together. While I was thankfully not in a physically abusive relationship, I was in a very emotionally and mentally abusive one. When I emerged from that, my friends were waiting for me with open arms. My husband, who was (and remains to be) one of my best friends, was a shoulder to cry on, a rock to lean on, and was always there to catch me without judging any of the terrible decisions I'd made with my life. Not to mention, the embodiment of honestly everything I'd ever *really* wanted in a partner. Eventually I realized he'd been in love with me for years (and never said anything!!!). Face, meet palm, lol. Paging Captain Oblivious... Anyway, now thirteen years after that revelation, we have two kids, lol. I find that I tend to put more of my husband into my heroes--quirks like being obsessed with cars, or a really sarcastic and tough veneer but a huge mush underneath--than of myself into my heroines. What I do see is that I write them more as I'd like to see myself: I'm not nearly as cool under fire as Cassie in Alpha Bitch, or as confident as Georgia in Caleb. But the book I'm currently editing (and with any luck, might make it to publication this year), yeah....at one point I was as broken emotionally as Lilith is, with the same non-existent sense of self-worth or self-esteem. There's this one scene, a few pages long, where I was just gutted when it was done. I'm pretty sure I wrote it in a daze late at night, and then just stared at the screen for a few minutes before going to bed. (The first draft was written six years ago, mind you). When I read back over it the next day, I cried. So, long story short, it all depends on the mood of the story I guess. :) Look out for me, posting two weeks in a row! lol! This week's blog topic is My earliest memory . I honestly don't known as I can say what my earliest memory is. When I think back, I can remember things like, waking up from a dream and still being half in it, thinking I could hear people talking (in another language). I remember some of the toys I used to play with, my friends, our pets...but nothing stands out as clear, nothing I can point to as "that's my first memory". Maybe I've killed too many brain cells in my 40 years of life? Hah! Anyway, let me tell you the story of my dream: When I was very young - let's say, 3ish, maybe 4? - my mom would put me in my room for a nap, or I'd be in my room playing by myself while she was doing something else. My brother would be at school, dad at work. And I'd be having full-blown conversations on my own. So, one day my mom asked me who I was talking to, and I told her, "my mother". Of course, she replied that she was in the other room, and I said to her, "NO, my *Indian* mother". And then I'd tell her stories about life as a Native American, giving her names and places that I had NO WAY of knowing at that age. Now, when I was a little older, at night, once everyone went to bed, my parents would often open the door to my room. I'm not entirely sure of the reasons for this, but I imagine it had something to do with heat/air flow. We had pets, and occasionally our cat would come in and sleep on my bed. Let's say I was 6 or 7 at this time, although I truly don't know how old I was. One night, I'd had a very vivid dream of living in a Native village - teepees, stuff like that. For whatever reason, I woke up, and I *SWEAR* I could still hear people talking. When I told my mom about it, she tried very hard to convince me that what I'd heard was the cat sleeping -- snoring -- on my bed. But I never really believed her. :) Hello there (again)!
So, clearly, I'm terrible at regular posting. One glance at the dates of my archived posts should prove that. Hell, I didn't even blog about my release in November of 2018! **facepalm** Of course, I blame all of this on two toddlers, my position on the preschool executive board, and working part time, all while trying to keep the household running -- and not my own terrible time management and amazing ability to procrastinate, lol. With all that in mind, one of my amazing Evernight cohorts and talented writer Dania Voss saw a listing for a weekly blog challenge and thought it would be fun for a bunch of us to all post, using a group hashtag of #evernighties and this awesome graphic that Katherine Wyvern created. We'll be posting to our own blogs, the Evernight Reader's group on facebook, and on whatever other social media outlets we want to include. So naturally I jumped on the bandwagon, because something like this might just be the kick in the rear that I need to get better at this self-promotion stuff. ;) WEEK ONE: My favorite thing that I've written (and why) This is not an easy choice, honestly, despite the short list of published material. The reason for that is the massive amount of works-in-progress sitting on my laptop, and my current foray into the world of fanfic. If I had to pick a favorite, first and foremost Cassie from Alpha Bitch comes to mind. I loved writing that book. When I think of her, I hear the quote "though she be but little, she is fierce". Also, at the time, the song "Exes and Ohs" by Elle King was big, and I listened to her stuff pretty much nonstop while writing. Add that with the concept of a single female Alpha leading a wolf pack, in her twenties, and you get one feisty little woman who doesn't take shit from anyone -- including the Alpha Council and the other packs in their neck of the woods -- but is still genuinely caring and nurturing, a natural leader. She's strong, without having an agenda or something to prove. She just wants to live life on her terms, not some outdated mode of patriarchal thinking that says males run the packs and women sit quietly by. When I wrote Alpha Bitch, I'd intended for it to be a stand-alone, but a year or so later, I had an idea for another book set in that world (which was Alpha's Beta), and I've nearly completed the third book in the series now -- which is significantly longer than the first two. Cassie makes appearances in both of the other books in the series, mostly because I can't shut her up. She's far more influential in her world than she let on at first, so this third book has been interesting, to say the least. :) |
Author, wife, motherlover of wine, coffee, and reading. Archives
January 2019
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